It was as though his hands were soiling something never touched before.

The way the light fell it was as though the can were lit on a special altar.

"I'm contaminated," Gordie said.

"You sure are. " Eli spoke somewhere beyond sight. "You're going to land up in the hospital."

That wasn't what he'd meant, Gordle struggled to say, but he was distracted suddenly by the size of his hands. So big. Strong.

"Look at that," said Cordle wonderingly, opening and closing his fist.

"If only they'd let me fight the big one, huh? If only they'd gave me a chance."

"You did fight the big one," said Eli. "You got beat."

"That's right," said Gordic. "it wasn't even no contest. I wasn't even any good."

"You forget those things," said Eli. He was moving back and forth behind the chair.

"Eat this egg. I fixed it over easy."

"I couldn't," said Gordie, "or this bun either. I'm too sick."

His hands would not stay still. He had noticed this. They managed to do an alarming variety of things while he was not looking.

Now they had somehow crushed the beer can into a shape. He took his hands away and studied the can in its glowing spotlight.

The can was bent at the waist and twisted at the hips like the torso of a woman. It rocked slightly side to side in the breeze from the window.

"She's empty!" he realized suddenly, repossessing the can. "I don't think it was full to begin with. I couldn't've. " "What?"

asked Eli. Patiently, his face calm, he spooned the egg and fork-toasted bread into his mouth. His head was brown and showed through the thin gray stubble of his crew cut. A pale light lifted and fell in the room. It was six A.M. "Want some?" Eli offered steaming coffee in a green plastic mug, warped and stained. It was the same color as his work clothes.

Gordie shook his head and turned away Eli drank from the cup himself "You wouldn't have another someplace that you forgot?" said Gordie sadly.

"No," said Eli.

"I've got to make a raise then," said Gordie.

The two men sat quietly, then Gordie shook the can, put it down, and walked out of the door. Once outside, he was. .h.i.t by such a burst of determination that He almost walked normally, balanced in one wheel rut, down Eli's little road. Some of his thick hair stuck straight up in a peak, and some was crushed flat.

His face sagged. He'd hardly eaten that week, and his pants flapped beneath his jacket, cinched tight, the zipper shamefully unzipped.

Eli watched from his chair, sipping the coffee to warm his blood. He liked the window halfway open although the mornings were still cold.

When June lived with him she'd slept on the cot beside the stove, a lump beneath the quilts and army blankets when he came in to get her up for the government school bus.

Sometimes they'd sat together looking out the same window into cold blue dark. He'd hated to send her off at that lonely hour. Her coat was red. All her clothes were from the nuns. Once he'd bought June a plastic dish of bright bath-oil beads. Before he could stop her she had put one in her mouth, not understanding what it was. She'd swallowed it down, too. Then, when she'd come home, started crying out of disappointment and shame, bubbles had popped from her lips and nose.

Eli laughed out loud, then stopped. He saw her face and the shocked look. He sat there thinking of her without smiling and watched Gordie disappear.

Two cars pa.s.sed Gordie on the road but neither stopped. It was too early to get anything in town, but he would have appreciated a ride to his house. It was a mile to his turnoff, and his need grew worse with each step he took. He shook with the cold, with the lack. The world had narrowed to this strip of frozen mud. The trees were stung to either side in a dense mist, and the crackle his feet made breaking ice crystals was bad to hear. From time to time he stopped to let the crackle die down. He put his hands to his mouth to breathe on them.

He touched his cold cheeks. The skin felt rubbery and dead, Finally the turnoff came and he went down to the lake where his house was.

Somehow he gained the stairs and door then crawled across the carpet to the phone. He even looked the number up in the book.

"Royce there?" he asked the woman's voice. She put her husband on without a word.

"You still drinking?" said Royce.

"Could you bring me some quarts? Three, four, last me out.

I'll pay you when I get my check."

"I don't make house calls or give no credit."

"Cousin a you know I work."

There was a pause.

"All right then. Credit's one dollar on the bottle, and house call's two."

Gordie babbled his thanks. The phone clicked. Knowing it would come, Gordie felt much stronger, clearer in the brain. He knew he would sleep once he got the wine. He noticed he'd IPP, landed underneath the table, that he'd brought the phone down.

He lay back restfully. It was a good place to stay.

A lot of time went by, hours or days, and the quarts were gone.

Mote wine appeared. One quart helped and the next didn't.

Nothing happened. He'd gone too far. He found himself sitting at the kitchen table in a litter of dried bread, dishes he must have eaten something from, bottles and stubbed cigarettes. Either the sun was rising or the sun was going down, and although he did not feel that he could wait to find out which it was, he knew he had no choice. He was trapped there with himself He didn't know how long since he had slept.

Gordie's house was simple and very small. It was a rectangle divided in half The kitchen and the living room were in one half and the bedroom and the bathroom were in the other. A family of eight had lived here once, but that was long ago in the old days before government housing.

Gordie bought the place after June left. He'd fixed it up with s.h.a.g carpeting, linoleum tile, paint and Sheetrock and new combination windows looking out on the lake. He had always wanted to live by a lake, and now he did. All the time he had been living there he both missed June and was relieved to be without her. Now he couldn't believe that she would not return. He had been together with her all his life.

There was nothing she did not know about him. When they ran away from everybody and got married across the border in South Dakota, it was just a formality for the records. They already knew each other better than most people who were married a lifetime.

They knew the good things, but they knew how to hurt each other, too.

"I was a b.a.s.t.a.r.d, but so were you," he insisted to the room.

"We were even."

The sun was setting, he decided. The air was darker. The waves rustled and the twigs sc.r.a.ped together outside.

bank, I love you, little cousin!" he said loudly. "June!" Her name burst from him. He wanted to take it back as soon as he said it.

Never, never, ever call the dead by their names, Grandma said.

They might answer. Gordie knew this. Now he felt very uneasy.

Worse than before.

The sounds from the lake and trees bothered him, so he itched on the television. He turned the volume up as loud as possible. There was a program on with sirens and shooting. He kept that channel.

Still he could not forget that he'd called June.

He felt as though a bad thing was pushing against the walls from *de.

The windows quivered. He stood in the middle of the outsi room, unsteady, listening to everything too closely. He turned on the lights.

He locked each window and door. Still he heard things. The waves rustled against each other like a woman's stockinged legs.

Acorns dropping on the roof clicked like heels.

There was a low murmur in the breeze.

An old vacuum cleaner was plugged in the corner. He switched that on and the vibrations scrambled the sounds in the air. That was better.

Along with the television and the buzz of the lights, the vacuum cleaner was a definite help. He thought of other noises he might produce indoors. He remembered about the radio in the bedroom and lurched through the doorway to turn that on too. Full blast, a satisfying loud music poured from it, adding to the din. He went into the bathroom and turned on his electric shaver. There were no curtains in the bathroom, and something made him look at the window.

Her face. June's face was there. Wild and pale with a b.l.o.o.d.y mouth.

She raised her hand, thin bones, and scratched sadly on the gla.s.s.

When he ran from the bathroom she got angry and began to pound. The gla.s.s shattered. He heard it falling like music to the. bathroom floor.

Everything was on, even the oven. He stood in the humming light of the refrigerator, believing the cold radiance would protect him.

Nothing could stop her though.

There was nothing he could do, and then he did the wrong thing.

He plugged the toaster into the wall.

There was a loud crack. Darkness. A ball of red light fell in his hands. Everything went utterly silent, and she squeezed through the window in that instant.

Now she was in the bedroom pulling the sheets off the bed and arranging her perfume bottles. She was coming for him. He lurched for the door.

His car key Where was it? Pants pocket. He slipped through the door and fell down the stairs somehow pitching onto the hood of the Malibu parked below. He scrambled in, locked up tight, then roared the ignition. He switched the head lamps on and swung blindly from the yard, moving fast, hitting the potholes and bottoming out until he met the gravel road.

At first he was so relieved to escape that he forgot how sick he was.

He drove competently for a while, and then the surge of fear that had gotten him from the house wore off and he slumped forward, half sightless, on the wheel. A car approached, white light that blinded.

He pulled over to catch his senses. His mind lit in warped hope on another bottle. He'd get to town. Another bottle would straighten him out. The road was five miles of bending curves and the night was moonless, but he would make it. He dropped his head a few moments and slept to gain his strength.

He came to when the light roared by, dazzling him with noise and its closeness. He'd turned his own lights off, and the car had swerved to avoid him. Blackness closed over the other car's red taillights, and Gordie started driving. He drove with slowness and utter drunken care, craning close to the windshield, one eye shut so that the road would not branch into two before him. Gaining confidence, he rolled down his window and gathered speed. He knew the road to town by heart. The gravel clattered the wheel wells and the wind blew cold, sweet in his mouth, eager and watery. He felt better. So much better. The turn came so quickly he almost missed it. But he spun the wheel and swerved, catching himself halfway across the concrete road.

burns, _MA just there, as he concentrated on controlling the speed of the turn, he hit the deer. It floated into the shadow of his head beams The lamps blazed stark upon it. A sudden ghost, it vanished.

Gordie felt the jolt somewhat after he actually must have hit it, because, when he finally stopped the car, he had to walk back perhaps twenty yards before he found it sprawled oddly on its belly, legs splayed.

He stood over the carca.s.s, nudged it here and there with his foot.

Someone would trade it for a bottle, even if it was a tough old doe.

It was surprising, Gordie thought, to find one like this, barren from the looks of her, unless her fawn was hidden in the ditch. He looked around, saw nothing, but then the brush was tall, the air black as ink.

Bending slowly, he gripped the delicate fetlocks and pulled her down the road.

When he reached the car, he dropped the deer and -fumbled with his pocket. He found the only key he had was the square headed one for the ignition. He tried to open the trunk, but the key did not fit. The trunk unlocked only with the rounded key he'd left at home.

"d.a.m.n their hides," he shouted. Everything worked against him. He could not remember when this had started to happen.

Probably from the first, always and ever afterward, things had worked against him. He leaned over the slope of the trunk then turned onto his back. He was shaking hard all over, and his jaw had locked shut.

The sky was an impenetrable liquid, starless and grim. He had never really understood before but now, because two keys were made to open his one car, he saw clearly that the setup of life was rigged and he was trapped.

He was shaking dead sick, locked out of his car trunk, with a doe bleeding slowly at his feet.

"I'll throw her in the back then," he said, before confusion smashed down. The seat was vinyl. It was important that he get a bottle, several bottles, to stop the rattling. Once the shaking got a A good start on him nothing would help. It would whip him back and forth in its jaws like a dog breaks the spine of a gopher.

He opened the rear door and then, holding the deer under the front legs and cradled with its back against him, ducked into the backseat and pulled her through. She fit nicely, legs curled as if to run, still slightly warm. Gordie opened the opposite door and climbed out.

Then he walked around the front and sat down in the driver's seat. He started the car and moved onto the highway.

It was harder now to see the road. The night had grown darker or the shaking had obscured his vision. Or maybe the deer had knocked out a headlight. Clearly, he was sure of it, there was less light. He tried to accommodate the shaking. To keep it under control he took deep shuddering breaths that seemed to temporarily loosen its hold, but then it would be back, fiercely jolting him from side to side in his seat, so that the wheel twisted in his hands. He drove with impossible slowness now, hardly able to keep his course. A mile pa.s.sed slowly.

Perhaps another. Then he came to the big settlement of the Fortiers.

Their yard blazed with light. He drove a few yards past their gate, and then something made him even more uncomfortable than the shaking.

He sensed someone behind him and glanced in the rearview mirror.

What he saw made him stamp the brake in panic and shock.

The deer was up. She'd only been stunned.

Ears p.r.i.c.ked, gravely alert, she gazed into the rearview and met Gordie's eyes.

Her look was black and endless and melting pure. She looked through him. She saw into the troubled thrashing woods of him, a raffling thicket of bones. She saw how he'd woven his own crown of thorns. She saw how although he was not worthy he'd jammed this relief on his brow.

Her eyes stared into some hidden place but blocked him out. Flat black.

He did not understand what he was going to do. He bent, out of her gaze, and groped beneath the front seat for the tire iron, a flat-edged crowbar thick as a child's wrist.